As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Provisioning of information handling systems has long been used in large computing networks, for example, corporate networks. “Provisioning” broadly refers to a process that may enable administrators to enforce network security policies and/or assign system resources and privileges to users of information handling systems in a computing network (e.g., employees, contractors and business partners of a particular business enterprise). Historically, provisioning has required substantial human interaction and/or intervention with individual information handling systems being provisioned. For example, in traditional provisioning approaches, a network administrator and/or end user may need to install and/or configure an operating system and numerous application programs on the information handling system in order to make the information handling system usable from a practical standpoint.
To reduce and/or eliminate the necessity of administrator and user interaction with an information handling system to be provisioned, the concept of “bare-metal” provisioning, also known as “no-touch” or “zero-touch” provisioning, has increasingly been used. “Bare-metal provisioning” generally refers to the concept of provisioning an information handling system with little or no user or administrator interaction. For example, using bare-metal provisioning, an information handling system may be ordered by an administrator or other enterprise representative and shipped to a particular location. The information handling system may then be coupled to a network (e.g., via a wired or wireless network connection). After coupling to the network, the information handling system may automatically install (e.g., from a network-attached storage system) all necessary operating systems, application programs, configurations, security privileges, etc. desired for the ultimate end use of the information handling system.
However, traditional approaches to bare-metal provisioning are not without disadvantages. Under traditional approaches, an undesired or “rogue” information handling system may be coupled to the enterprise network and may be provisioned as if it were a “legitimate” information handling system. Such a rogue information handling system could be used maliciously, for example, to jeopardize the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive data of the enterprise.